A Solo For Two
“At themost basic level, despite their limitless backgrounds and performance styles, all solo performers are storytellers. And ifwe assume
that the very irst performances in human history consisted of an individual telling stories in front of othermembers of his society/tribe, then the formis primal.”
- Director Jo Bonney, in her introduction to Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance
An Iliad harkens back to this primal origin of solo performance. In the play, a character known only as “the Poet” recounts to us one of the oldest tales in the Western canon. Solo performance relies more than other theatrical forms on the direct interaction between performer and audience. There is often no “fourth wall”—instead, the storyteller speaks directly to the spectators,making eye contact to be sure they absorb everyword. In An Iliad, the burden ofHomer’s ancient epic rests on the Poet’s shoulders; he is responsible formaking us feel its impact.
Though the performance is one man’s responsibility, An Iliad is not the creation of an individual artist. Rather, the text of the play is the product of collaboration betweenmultiple storytellers, principallyHomer (and by extension, his translatorRobert Fagles),DenisO’Hare and Lisa Peterson.
Lisa Peterson says she was attracted to the Iliad because she was interested in creating a theatrical response to the question of what it means to be at war. Instead of looking for a writerwithwhomto collaborate, she sought out an actor.With
Denis O’Hare on board, the journey that led to the creation of An Iliad began with a desire to capture the experience of live solo storytelling from the Homeric tradition. Peterson and O’Harewere particularly fascinated by the idea that the story of the Iliad had been passed down frompoet to poet, performed with different improvisations and emphases chosen to it each audience.
The two co-writers spent hours reading Robert Fagles’ translation of the Iliad aloud, stopping to improvise contemporary discussions, retellings, explanations, ormusings about the story as it unfolded. Afterward, they reviewed
recordings of their improvisations and created the text of An Iliad by layering lines from Fagles’ translation, lines that they wrote and lines that they pulled directly from their improvisations. The result is a story that is both out-of-time and incredibly relevant.
The Cover of Robert Fagles translation of the Iliad,which served as the basis of Peterson and O’Hare’s adaptation.
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